Shale drilling poses enormous threats

June 9, 2014

Marcellus shale drilling is not happening in Berkeley County, but the threat this industry poses to the county and the rest of West Virginia is astronomical. The recent public meeting held by the Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority with state Senator Donald Cookman speaking made many hidden facts known to the public.

Hydraulic drilling known as fracturing or fracking produces radioactive waste in several forms. There is drill cuttings/mud, drilling socks/nets and waste water now being put in deep wells, all radio active. Only the drill cuttings has even been mentioned in legislation and it may be the least radio active of the three forms mentioned.

The WVDEP claimed drill cuttings are safe. They also illegally lifted the tonnage limits for the Wetzel County landfill in 2013, where 250,000 tons were mixed in with municipal solid waste (MSW), some which came from Ohio. And, Wetzel County isn't the only West Virginia landfill accepting this radio active waste.

In addition, the Charleston Gazette reported that Range Resources trucked two small containers of waste from its natural gas drilling operations in Washington County, Pennsylvania to a Charleston area landfill. Officials from the Arden Landfill in Pennsylvania turned up higher levels of radioactivity than Pennsylvania deems acceptable for normal landfill disposal.

Legislation, H.B.107, that passed in the 2014 special session of the West Virginia State Legislature, was poorly worded. There are five West Virginia landfills that applied and received permits to accept the drill cuttings and the legislation requires they build special cells and install Geiger counters. Currently, H.B.107 permits any West Virginia landfill, including the five with special permits, to accept radio active drill cuttings and mix it in with MSW. No special cells or Geiger counters needed.

H.B.107 was meant to keep Marcellus drill cuttings from being placed in any West Virginia landfill that was in part or wholly made up of karst (limestone). That would have included LCS in Berkeley County. But due to "unknown" circumstances the final bill as it passed from the Senate to the House had the necessary wording deleted.

Other disturbing facts: several studies have shown that earthquakes in Oklahoma, Texas and Ohio, to name some, have been caused by hydraulic fracturing, and wells have been contaminated with methane destroying peoples drinking water.